Why is #JavaScript so popular? I hate everything about it.

I'm speaking at the #Canberra Field #Naturalists meeting at #ANU next month on #Malaise trapping and the #insects and other #invertebrates that surround us without our noticing them.

I expect most of my slides to be arrays of four or six #microscope images with a header (probably a family name in most cases) and captions for each image.

I don't want to lay out all these images in #LibreOffice (or any similar presentation tool) because I'm a perfectionist and getting it all tidy will take forever.

So, I decided to try out #Slidev, #Marp and other #Markdown-based presentation tools. The Markdown part is very appealing, but they all lean hard into JavaScript. That would be fine so long as I don't have to think about that side of things.

Slidev's AppleBasic theme seemed to be the best starting point, so I started hacking it to add som extra gridded image views. Plain image grids were not too challenging, but I really want captions for each image, so I started trying to understand how the templates use the forest of underlying JS libraries and CSS artefacts to produce the displayed slides.

Frankly, the whole thing is so opaque and would take me much longer to understand than preparing multiple presentations by hand would.

Then I realised I can use #montage on the command line to produce the kind of layouts I want, and I can script #exiftool to extract and prepare the captions which will save time.

So, my new plan is to write a #Python script that processes a #YAML file listing all the slides, titles and image paths. It can generate PNG images that are close to the target 1920*1080 size (give or take a little). I'll then use LibreOffice for a couple of more text-oriented or irregular slides, export those and combine all the images into a PDF.

I'm sure this will be way faster than battling Node.js. Not sure why I felt I had to write it up.

https://fieldnatsact.com/

Why is #JavaScript so popular? I hate everything about it.

I'm speaking at the #Canberra Field #Naturalists meeting at #ANU next month on #Malaise trapping and the #insects and other #invertebrates that surround us without our noticing them.

I expect most of my slides to be arrays of four or six #microscope images with a header (probably a family name in most cases) and captions for each image.

I don't want to lay out all these images in #LibreOffice (or any similar presentation tool) because I'm a perfectionist and getting it all tidy will take forever.

So, I decided to try out #Slidev, #Marp and other #Markdown-based presentation tools. The Markdown part is very appealing, but they all lean hard into JavaScript. That would be fine so long as I don't have to think about that side of things.

Slidev's AppleBasic theme seemed to be the best starting point, so I started hacking it to add som extra gridded image views. Plain image grids were not too challenging, but I really want captions for each image, so I started trying to understand how the templates use the forest of underlying JS libraries and CSS artefacts to produce the displayed slides.

Frankly, the whole thing is so opaque and would take me much longer to understand than preparing multiple presentations by hand would.

Then I realised I can use #montage on the command line to produce the kind of layouts I want, and I can script #exiftool to extract and prepare the captions which will save time.

So, my new plan is to write a #Python script that processes a #YAML file listing all the slides, titles and image paths. It can generate PNG images that are close to the target 1920*1080 size (give or take a little). I'll then use LibreOffice for a couple of more text-oriented or irregular slides, export those and combine all the images into a PDF.

I'm sure this will be way faster than battling Node.js. Not sure why I felt I had to write it up.

https://fieldnatsact.com/

"But what [Apple are] worried about is that Android is sort of taking over the market. Obviously they go from 0 - when the iPhone comes out Android doesn't really exist - to 80% of the market in a number of years."

#PatrickMcGee, 2026

https://omny.fm/shows/the-little-red-podcast/bad-apple-how-the-world-s-greatest-company-changed-chinese-tech

This happened because unlike iThings, the original Android was an Open Source OS, which could be freely reused by device and app makers. As Android gets more and more locked down, this could happen again.

#podcasts #ANU #LittleRedPodcast

On Tuesday night, I successfully defended my #PhD thesis on #dataset #documentation as a leverage point for better speech technologies at #ANU #Cybernetics! 🎉

I have some minor corrections and then I will officially be a #PhD. It's been a long six years!

On Tuesday night, I successfully defended my #PhD thesis on #dataset #documentation as a leverage point for better speech technologies at #ANU #Cybernetics! 🎉

I have some minor corrections and then I will officially be a #PhD. It's been a long six years!

#introduction I am new here. My brother @jaforbes tells me it is customary to do an opening post of things I find interesting or likely to discuss in the future. Here is my list: #democracy #ai #eng #engineering #osint #geopol #math #mathematics #humanrights #compsci #history #philosophy #space #australia #japan #bluemountains #science #tech #anu #unsw #uts #physics #uai #agi #nafo #peace #ukraine #taiwan #photography #tdd #andor. I have friends everywhere. I hope that you'll join me.

#introduction I am new here. My brother @jaforbes tells me it is customary to do an opening post of things I find interesting or likely to discuss in the future. Here is my list: #democracy #ai #eng #engineering #osint #geopol #math #mathematics #humanrights #compsci #history #philosophy #space #australia #japan #bluemountains #science #tech #anu #unsw #uts #physics #uai #agi #nafo #peace #ukraine #taiwan #photography #tdd #andor. I have friends everywhere. I hope that you'll join me.

(1/2) What do you get when you mix teen #popculture references 💅, time travelling witches ⏰🔮, and zine making 📰? A very Sci_Burst workshop experience!

Earlier this month we ran a #scicomm #workshop for this group of exceptional high school students participating in the Curious Minds ‘East’ Camp at #ANU 👩‍🔬💜

#CuriousMinds is a STEM mentoring program for talented girls in years 8-9 who face barriers because of where they live, their socio-economic background, and/or their Indigenous status.

(1/2) What do you get when you mix teen #popculture references 💅, time travelling witches ⏰🔮, and zine making 📰? A very Sci_Burst workshop experience!

Earlier this month we ran a #scicomm #workshop for this group of exceptional high school students participating in the Curious Minds ‘East’ Camp at #ANU 👩‍🔬💜

#CuriousMinds is a STEM mentoring program for talented girls in years 8-9 who face barriers because of where they live, their socio-economic background, and/or their Indigenous status.

I just got a tour of the National Computational Infrastructure building in #Canberra (at #ANU) and please excuse me while I just admire all the pretty lights and big machines and how many terabytes of data they can process 24/7

I just got a tour of the National Computational Infrastructure building in #Canberra (at #ANU) and please excuse me while I just admire all the pretty lights and big machines and how many terabytes of data they can process 24/7

I just got a tour of the National Computational Infrastructure building in #Canberra (at #ANU) and please excuse me while I just admire all the pretty lights and big machines and how many terabytes of data they can process 24/7

The official ads are now out for the #ANU #Logic Summer School, to be held in #Canberra , Australia from 1-12 December. https://comp.anu.edu.au/lss/

Paraphrasing a bit to fit in a toot:

OVERVIEW

The ANU Logic Summer School is an annual event that offers a two week long programme of lectures on modern logic, the foundational discipline of the information sciences. Topics include not only the science of reasoning but also computability theory, type theory and other tools for understanding processes, declarative programming, automatic proof generation, program verification and much more. The school is primarily geared at late undergraduate and masters students, but is open to all, including postgraduate and PhD students, postdocs, and participants from industry.

PROGRAMME

Week 1:
John Slaney (ANU): Foundations of Metalogic
Michael Norrish (ANU): Computability and Incompleteness
Peter Baumgartner (CSIRO): Overview of Automated Reasoning
Liam O'Connor (ANU): Introduction to Interactive Theorem-Proving with Isabelle

Week 2:
Sonia Marin (Birmingham): Intuitionistic Modal Logic
Chelsea Edmonds (UWA): Advanced Isabelle for Software Verification
Cláudia Nalon (Brasília): Resolution for Modal Logics and its Implementation
Gillian Russell (ANU): Barriers to Entailment
Vineet Rajani (UNSW): Modal Type Theories and Logical Relations

ORGANISATION

The logic summer school is organised by Ranald Clouston, Peter Hoefner, and Michael Norrish. Please direct all enquiries to lss.comp@anu.edu.au

The official ads are now out for the #ANU #Logic Summer School, to be held in #Canberra , Australia from 1-12 December. https://comp.anu.edu.au/lss/

Paraphrasing a bit to fit in a toot:

OVERVIEW

The ANU Logic Summer School is an annual event that offers a two week long programme of lectures on modern logic, the foundational discipline of the information sciences. Topics include not only the science of reasoning but also computability theory, type theory and other tools for understanding processes, declarative programming, automatic proof generation, program verification and much more. The school is primarily geared at late undergraduate and masters students, but is open to all, including postgraduate and PhD students, postdocs, and participants from industry.

PROGRAMME

Week 1:
John Slaney (ANU): Foundations of Metalogic
Michael Norrish (ANU): Computability and Incompleteness
Peter Baumgartner (CSIRO): Overview of Automated Reasoning
Liam O'Connor (ANU): Introduction to Interactive Theorem-Proving with Isabelle

Week 2:
Sonia Marin (Birmingham): Intuitionistic Modal Logic
Chelsea Edmonds (UWA): Advanced Isabelle for Software Verification
Cláudia Nalon (Brasília): Resolution for Modal Logics and its Implementation
Gillian Russell (ANU): Barriers to Entailment
Vineet Rajani (UNSW): Modal Type Theories and Logical Relations

ORGANISATION

The logic summer school is organised by Ranald Clouston, Peter Hoefner, and Michael Norrish. Please direct all enquiries to lss.comp@anu.edu.au

One for the #RSE crew - @jamessmithies is hiring for a Research Fellow (Computational Methods) at #ANU - 2 year fixed term

Focus on computational methods to support #DigitalHumanities

https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4313700832

#FediHired
#GetFediHired
#HigherEd
#AcademicJobs
#FediHire
#FediHire_au

A Strategic Community #Roadmap for an #Australian#FAIR#Vocabulary Ecosystem

https://doi.org/10.25911/N6K8-F540

Three years ago, I participated in a very engaged workshop at #ANU on #vocabularies for FAIR #data management. It sharpened how I think about vocabularies. I now see them primarily as a #KnowledgeTransfer tool for representing domain expertise in an actionable form. And I think we do a terrible job both at highlighting how critical they are (particularly in an age where trusted expertise is harder to find) and also at making them easier for others to find and reuse.

I picture this scenario. A student is about to start collecting data for their thesis. They need to make choices about what variables to observe or what questions to ask participants, and they need to think about how they want to represent the results to support their analysis. In the ideal case, the actual data collecting effort is about populating an imagined but initially empty data matrix. If they could be assisted to find the best structured and most widely used (in their domain) vocabularies for any categorical values in their data, it would be possible to generate that template matrix with in-built validation tools, etc. The data they finally collect would have most of its metadata already defined and would be properly interoperable with data collected by others in their domain. Meta-analysis would be much simpler.

I am interested in why tools like this don't really exist, or at least why they are not mainstream. I think it's because vocabularies are seen as such an ultra-nerdy subset of the nerdy topic of #metadata rather than presented as an opportunity to stand on the shoulders of others. What can be done to make them more friendly and intuitive for such purposes?

Finally, after way too many struggles, we have a report and recommendations from from that meeting in 2022. I tried to add some of these ideas to the final product as best I could.

A Strategic Community #Roadmap for an #Australian#FAIR#Vocabulary Ecosystem

https://doi.org/10.25911/N6K8-F540

Three years ago, I participated in a very engaged workshop at #ANU on #vocabularies for FAIR #data management. It sharpened how I think about vocabularies. I now see them primarily as a #KnowledgeTransfer tool for representing domain expertise in an actionable form. And I think we do a terrible job both at highlighting how critical they are (particularly in an age where trusted expertise is harder to find) and also at making them easier for others to find and reuse.

I picture this scenario. A student is about to start collecting data for their thesis. They need to make choices about what variables to observe or what questions to ask participants, and they need to think about how they want to represent the results to support their analysis. In the ideal case, the actual data collecting effort is about populating an imagined but initially empty data matrix. If they could be assisted to find the best structured and most widely used (in their domain) vocabularies for any categorical values in their data, it would be possible to generate that template matrix with in-built validation tools, etc. The data they finally collect would have most of its metadata already defined and would be properly interoperable with data collected by others in their domain. Meta-analysis would be much simpler.

I am interested in why tools like this don't really exist, or at least why they are not mainstream. I think it's because vocabularies are seen as such an ultra-nerdy subset of the nerdy topic of #metadata rather than presented as an opportunity to stand on the shoulders of others. What can be done to make them more friendly and intuitive for such purposes?

Finally, after way too many struggles, we have a report and recommendations from from that meeting in 2022. I tried to add some of these ideas to the final product as best I could.

I have finished up with teaching my big introductory #Logic course at #ANU, leading 300+ students through propositional, first order, and temporal logic, through natural deduction and tableaux, and through formal semantics and translation from natural language. I did a huge overhaul of the existing course and made some mistakes en route for sure, but overall student feedback was very positive. Although I am not obliged to expose anything behind my LMS paywall, I feel strongly about disseminating teaching as a genuine intellectual output and have a public website up with most of my materials: https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp2620/news/2025/02/17/welcome/

I have finished up with teaching my big introductory #Logic course at #ANU, leading 300+ students through propositional, first order, and temporal logic, through natural deduction and tableaux, and through formal semantics and translation from natural language. I did a huge overhaul of the existing course and made some mistakes en route for sure, but overall student feedback was very positive. Although I am not obliged to expose anything behind my LMS paywall, I feel strongly about disseminating teaching as a genuine intellectual output and have a public website up with most of my materials: https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp2620/news/2025/02/17/welcome/