• Observable vs. R for data journalism

    I’ve been using Observable at work for the best part of a year now, since being introduced to it properly by my colleague Ben. It’s an incredibly well-designed tool with a growing (and very friendly) community of developers and users. In this respect, it resembles my other favoured tool(s) for smaller-scale data analysis: R, and particularly the world of RStudio/the tidyverse.

  • Christmas holiday photos

    I’ve had fun over the Christmas holidays—I had a lot of leave to use up, so have been off for three weeks, and have managed to travel a fair bit within the (east of the) UK. I thought I’d pick the most interesting photographs from my phone (excluding Christmas itself) and write a few sentences about each, to help the holidays stick in my mind.

  • Imposter syndrome

    I wrote this story in a rush of enthusiasm last spring after an incredible Signal exchange with its protagonist, whose name I’ve changed. I was at NICAR 2020 in New Orleans at the time and remember being distracted from whatever talk I was in by the messages popping up on my phone.