flypig.co.uk

Now

A /now page, for sharing what I'm currently working on. Updated 18 August 2023.

Work

In February I started as a Research Data Scientist for the Alan Turing Institute at the British Library in London. It's been six months now and I'm feeling much better integrated and more confident about my work. I'm working on two main projects: one relating to benchmarking of LLMs on High Performance Computing platforms, the other building a citizen-science platform in collaboration with the autistic community. They are both genuinely fascinating and a privilege to work on.

I've also been contributing to a Turing Data Story related to the Eurovision Song Contest, which is a lot of fun.

Rest

Joanna and I are both currently on holiday. We spent last week on the Isle of Arran, staying at the Stonewater House Vegan B&B. Stonewater House was amazing — the most outstanding vegan breakfasts and superb accommodation — as was the island itself. We went for walks, enjoyed phenomenal views of Holy Isle, across the the Firth of Clyde and Kilbrannan Sound. Really breathtaking stuff. We visited the four-millennia-old Auchendar Druid Standing Stone, the similarly ancient Machrie Moor Standing Stones, King's Cave and much besides.

Now we're back in Cambridgeshire and enjoying nice weather and the relaxed atmosphere for another week.

We'll be back at work next week and I'll be getting back on my bike in this beatiful weather. I've been cycling to work about once per week when the weather allows. It takes about an hour each way and cycling back up Madingley Rise is punishing, but it replaces a temperamental 45 minute bus journey with a more predictable 45 minute cycle. We've bought a tricyle for Joanna to ride, but we still need to build it.

Play

During the holiday I started working on the upgrade of Gecko from ESR78 to ESR91 for the Sailfish Browser. This is a big project, so this was the right time to get started and I'm enjoying it already. I'm keeping a record of my progress on my Gecko-dev Diary page.

The Sailfish Community Newsletter is currently on pause over the summer period, which is part of the reason I've now got time to do some development.

My project skinning the Ubuntu Touch installer, and my regression discovery project with Frajo, are currently on hold while I work on all these other things. Paused, but still possibilities for the future.