Originally trained as a software engineer, I went on to do a PhD in Linguistics & English Language at the University of Edinburgh. Apart from my academic research on modelling language change I have also worked with (and on) open source software on a wide range of other topics, in particular cartography and sound.
You can find a lot of the code I write over on my GitHub profile. I have an irregularly updated blog, and have previously also written for Replicated Typo.
cultevo If you're a linguist or cultural evolution researcher you might be interested in my cultevo R package, which provides measures and statistical tests often used in the study of cultural evolution.
On most political maps produced in modern times, nation states and other geo-political bodies are represented as homogeneous slabs that have no internal structure: the inner city of the capital is as much part of the country as its most deserted hinterland.
borders explores a more meaningful way of conceiving of a nation in social terms, as the imagined community of all individuals who consider themselves to belong to the same nation. Instead of representing a country as a uniform territory, the map only considers areas that are actually inhabited by humans, shaded according to their population density.
dem2stlI wrote the dem2stl R package in order to convert digital elevation map (dem) files to .stl (and other) 3d-printable model files. It supports the generation of arbitrary (i.e. non-rectangular) shapes, such as countries or continents, and the generated models exhibit the correct curvature of the respective landmass on the Earth spheroid.
Together with my good friend Ana Jeličiċ I participated in the Open Data hackathon held by the Austrian Center for Digital Humanities. Our project consisted of automatic data enrichment of a historical map of war damage to buildings in Vienna, as well as the creation of an interactive online map to explore those damages relative to contemporary maps.
Some of my friends say I'm obsessed with self-documentation. I say: know thyself!
As a first step in my attempt to catalogue (and map) everything I've ever done, I created this interactive map of all the flights I've ever flown. It's also possible to upload, map and statistically analyse your own flight data in CSV format.
While the qualitative comparison of the “character” of different places is common practice, the arguably more appropriate quantitative juxtaposition of their geographies isn't. In order to bring these two levels of comparison closer together I've been playing with representations which overlay different places onto each other while maintaining comparable projections and scales.
alpinia is a Python script wrapped around GDAL's hillshading algorithm whose sole purpose it is to allow easy creation of comically exaggerated relief maps. The example shows the mighty mountain range that is home to Greenwich Observatory.
As part of Google Summer of Code I undertook a complete re-write of the official Sound library for Processing, a software framework for visual media arts. I still act as the principal maintainer of the processing-sound Java library.
My apocalyptic interactive art installation sonic gray goo was exhibited at Hidden Door Festival in Edinburgh in 2015.
I've designed and built a little Arduino Nano-based MIDI beat clock driver for use in live performances. It allows you to flexibly control drum machines or other MIDI-driven arpeggiators from a tap button or pedal (such as a digital keyboard sustain pedal).
