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Martin Chorley

@mjc.martinjc.com
200 followers 331 following 68 posts

Dean of Education, College of Physical Sciences and Engineering, Cardiff University. Education, Data, Computational Journalism. Runner, Gardener, Geek. Organiser of low-stakes conspiracies

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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 08/05/2026
there we go. #senedd26, at least until the defections and resignations start martinjc.github.io/wales-senedd...
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 08/05/2026
two constituencies to go ... #senedd26 martinjc.github.io/wales-senedd...
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 08/05/2026
eleven constituencies in ... #senedd26 martinjc.github.io/wales-senedd...
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 08/05/2026
nine constituencies in ... #senedd26 martinjc.github.io/wales-senedd...
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 08/05/2026
typically all the results came in while I was on the school run and arguing in coop with a hangry 8 year old, but ....
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 08/05/2026
0% is also the chances of me remembering to keep this up to date throughout the day, but have a look at it sometime next week and it'll probably be somewhat correct possibly* *unlikely #senedd26
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 08/05/2026
and with a massive 0% of the results reported, it seems like it's still all to play for in #senedd26 martinjc.github.io/wales-senedd...
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 25/03/2026
Wales is going to look very different if the actual results follow these polls ...
A map of Wales with the projected results from the Senedd election based on the latest polling
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Reposted by Martin Chorley
much like your ghosting @mlyp.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
Perfect
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 10/03/2026
I also threw all the feedback into notebookLM and generated a 20 minute podcast overview of the feedback as a tool to help students avoid the errors made by previous classes
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 10/03/2026
this is a nice way to practice analysis and vis skills, get some formative feedback on what they're doing, *and* encourage the class to engage with the previous year's feedback before they submit their own final assignments
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 10/03/2026
today in datavis class - we're looking at feedback for the final assessment. I gave out *all* the feedback I'd given for the last few years, students analysed it, then came up with some 'dashboard' type visuals to show what they'd found out
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 04/03/2026
Yes, lots of consideration and reflection, and a lot of interesting ethics discussions beforehand and afterwards
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 04/03/2026
A5 We've had students set up personas on tiktok or instagram and examine how easy it is to manipulate the algorithm to serve particular content or topics without explicitly searching for them - interacting with posts they think will eventually lead to where they want to go #LTHEChat
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 04/03/2026
Yes, think it's important to look at the whole ecosystem, particularly given how tightly coupled some of these systems are now (e.g. grok + X)
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 04/03/2026
A2 Yes, for now ... but really I think HE is too late. This needs to be embedded in earlier parts of the education system - so I'd like to hope eventually it would be something that students join us already being fully aware of #LTHEChat
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 04/03/2026
A1 filter bubbles for our students dictating what they see and hear ... a concern for well over a decade but I'm not sure how widespread or large the impacts really are. Concerns that AI will make things worse perhaps? #LTHEChat
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 24/02/2026
Yes, with slightly more realistic* data it looks a lot less busy and perhaps more understandable (*polling, with random seat distributions geographically, so take your realism with a pinch of salt)
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 24/02/2026
perhaps part of the problem is that we have too many parties. we should restrict it to two to reduce the colour clashes
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 24/02/2026
hmmm ... it's better than the contiguous I think, but the background is definitely needed
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 24/02/2026
Yes, I think that's a potential benefit. But having struggled with the difference between South and mid Wales in population terms I will now be standing for election on a single issue platform of empowering the boundary commission to forcibly relocate the people rather than moving the boundaries
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 24/02/2026
To place my hexagons and create the 'Wales' background, I needed to generate a hexmap of the shape of Wales. There are probably a few ways I could have done this, but the easiest was to boil an ocean to get Gemini to code me up a web app that takes in geojson boundaries and spits out hexagons
an AI written web app to turn geographic coordinates into hexagons
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 24/02/2026
Wales gets slightly less awkward if we try to use non-contiguous hexes. Next up, start adding 'fake' election results to see how they look with realistic results #datavis #dataviz #hexes #election #senedd
hexmaps showing constituencies for the 2026 senedd elections
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 18/02/2026
In future rather than adjusting constituency boundaries according to population, we should adjust the population according to the constituency boundaries, to make the maps nicer. I for one will welcome the relocation to mid Wales, even if it does make the commute a challenge
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 18/02/2026
Wales is a really awkward country to turn into hexagons, but I think this just about works. martinjc.github.io/senedd-2026-...
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 16/02/2026
Is it "stop drinking"?
A screenshot of an article with the headline "there's one simple method to lower alcohol intake, and it works" and a picture of a pint of beer being poured.
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 13/02/2026
More details in the write up (s): www.martinjc.com/blog/posts/2... www.martinjc.com/blog/posts/2... and the code is all on github: github.com/martinjc/str... github.com/martinjc/ani...
martinjc.com
Simple Strava Downloader in Python
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 13/02/2026
I found myself with a little spare time this week, so finally finished a side project - writing some simple python scripts to download data from Strava and creating an animated timelapse of my running data over the last 15 years. Is it useful? Not at all. Am I pleased? Yes I am.
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Reposted by Martin Chorley
The New World @thenewworldmag.bsky.social · 22/12/2025
Lords minister Jacqui Smith gave evidence to parliament and suggested universities could simply continue to teach students if they were insolvent – something widely believed to be illegal ✏️ @jamesrball.com
thenewworld.co.uk
Is 2026 the year that Britain’s universities go bankrupt?
Immigration crackdowns are cutting revenues from overseas students - and now some institutions are on the brink
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 07/12/2025
and it just did it. built the thing. found some errors. debugged and rewrote the thing. refactored and tidied the code. wrote me some docs. and it works.
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 07/12/2025
and some very basic prompts ...
a prompt for an AI coding agent: "hex.html contains two maps showing results of an election, and parliament contains a parliament diagram showing the same results. i need to create a single page showing all three diagrams at the same time. it should be flex, column order on mobile and row on desktop"a prompt for an AI coding agent: "let's improve the interaction. each hexagon in the first diagram contains six smaller triangles. each of these triangles corresponds to a smaller hexagon in the second diagram, and a single triangle in the third diagram. when we click on a traingle or hexagon we should highlight the region to which it belongs in the first and second diagrams, and the related triangles in the third diagram. 

we should also update the information displayed so it lists the winner of that seat and the party, not just the name of the area"
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 07/12/2025
I gave it my wales election results project ... bsky.app/profile/mjc....
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 07/12/2025
do we as educators need to shift from "here's how you write code" to "here's how you review code"? how much coding knowledge do you need to be able to steer and prompt and review efficiently and effectively? Some? None? All of it?
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 07/12/2025
to see these agents read my very basic prompts, analyse my code, design solutions and then check that they work ... this is disruptive, unnerving, and a little upsetting.
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 07/12/2025
I have been playing with Antigravity, and it is *very* good. antigravity.google We're questioning 'how on earth do we teach coding in a world where agentic development exists?', but we're also thinking 'do we even need to teach coding in a world where agentic development exists?' #ai #coding
antigravity.google
Google Antigravity
Google Antigravity - Build the new way
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 02/12/2025
my career
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 20/11/2025
I think what I'm heading to here is an interactive ... start with Wales as a traditional geographic map, show how we can change it to a hexmap, break a hexagon down into six seats, show the full wales hexmap, then move into the parliament representation.
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 20/11/2025
What if you've presented your proportional results in your hex map and you want to transition that to a traditional parliamentary arc to show the proportions within the senedd? Yeah, we can do that ...
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 05/11/2025
if watching Wales turn into hexagons and back is your thing, you can do that all day, baby martinjc.github.io/wales-senedd... #pr #map #datajournalism #datavis
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 05/11/2025
now we're getting somewhere. it's always the islands that cause problems! not drawing lines between the different segments of borders while we're transforming between shapes is the solution. the menai straits in Bangor Conwy Môn still look a bit iffy during transform ... #map #wales #senedd
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 04/11/2025
ugh. path transitions. not fun. need to do some more maths here to polish this up
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 31/10/2025
This has been giving me a worry since I found out about it. Not sure this helps.
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 31/10/2025
I think the best result might be presenting both together? I'm not convinced yet that this works for proportional representation. Luckily we've got until May next year to figure it out
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 31/10/2025
Multiple hexes per constituency is also ... interesting. It's not really Wales shaped, but I think it just about works. Again, I suspect reordering the hexes within the constituency will give us a better overall sense of the results.
Hexmap of Wales showing potential rendering of 2026 election results
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 31/10/2025
Subdivision is ... interesting. I think there's some improvements to be made aesthetically in terms of the hexagon design. I think there's also something to be done with clustering parties together along boundaries to get a better sense of the overall picture (pre-attentive like)
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 31/10/2025
Proportional representation means we get six Senedd members per constituency, so we either need six separate shapes for each constituency, or will have to sub-divide each constituency somehow (basically the same thing, but leading to different presentation)
Two different hexmaps representing Wales, divided into the electoral constituencies for the Senedd 2026 elections
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 31/10/2025
Today I've been thinking about how to visualise the Senedd 2026 results under the new proportional representation system. New electoral regions, which means new maps, in particular new hexmaps
Drawings of hexmaps that may or may not look like Wales, but which definitely represent Wales
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 11/10/2025
Steady on. The thermostat is still only set to "bastard freezing"
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Martin Chorley @mjc.martinjc.com · 11/10/2025
I, Martin Chorley, being of sound mind and partially sound but aged body, have cracked and put the heating on. I shall be returning my British dad membership card to the nearest regional office on Monday.
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Reposted by Martin Chorley
Meredith Broussard, PhD @merbroussard.bsky.social · 21/09/2025
Once more for the people in the back
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