iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Toby Hodges @tobyhodges.carpentries.org · 13/08/2026

Interesting article, about a huge threat to one of the greatest sources of joy in my life. www.theguardian.com/music/ng-int... But I also laughed at this example of 'person doesn't understand how probabilities work'

Highlighted excerpt from the article. 'Treblo co-founder Ryan Tremblay confirmed to the Guardian that the classifier returns a very high probability score ("higher by far than any false positive")'

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Toby Hodges @tobyhodges.carpentries.org · 19/06/2026

Thread of several new things from @carpentries.carpentries.org this week, all related to genAI. 1. We have launched a bonus module to Instructor Training, GenAI in Workshops. carpentries.org/blog/2026/06...

The Carpentries GenAI in Workshops: empowering instructors to engage with learners about AI chatbot use in workshops.
Impacts of the training:
Understanding genAI's impact: recognise the challenges and opportunities genAI presents to learners.
Facilitating meaningful conversations: engage learners in open, critical discussions about genAI chatbot use.
Support genAI-informed learners: apply effective strategies to maximise learning in the presence of AI tools.

Target audience: the one-day bonus module is designed for certified carpentries instructors and anyone who has completed the Carpentries' Learner-Centered Teaching program, and who are noticing AI chatbot tools such as ChatGPT, Clause, and Gemini appear in their workshops and classrooms.
Through hands-on exercises and expert-led discussions grounded in the foundational principles of Instructor Training, participants leave with practical strategies to maximise learning and confidently guide novice learners in a genAI-present classroom.

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Toby Hodges @tobyhodges.carpentries.org · 27/02/2026

The @carpentries.carpentries.org team will be working closely with @hpc-carpentry.bsky.social community leaders in the coming months, to integrate their programs and processes into ours. It is an exciting time!

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Toby Hodges @tobyhodges.carpentries.org · 27/02/2026

HPC Carpentry @hpc-carpentry.bsky.social will become the latest Lesson Program of The Carpentries @hpc-carpentry.bsky.social in September 2026 🎉 They join our existing lesson programs: Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Software Carpentry. carpentries.org/blog/2026/02...

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Toby Hodges @tobyhodges.carpentries.org · 20/02/2026

Time to crack out the tardigrade again

An electron micrograph of a tardigrade, approximately 150 micrometers long, photoshopped so that it appears to be playing a tiny violin

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Toby Hodges @tobyhodges.carpentries.org · 30/01/2026

I am so excited to see the Collaborative Lesson Development Training program formally integrated into our partnership program 🎉 There are a bunch of other cool changes in the update as well. [1/2]

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Toby Hodges @tobyhodges.carpentries.org · 29/08/2025

Why the rush? Clearly you have until 10 November to get this finished??

Erick Martins Ratamero
European Molecular Biology Laboratory
Data Science Centre
November 10, 2025

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Toby Hodges @tobyhodges.carpentries.org · 20/08/2025

"It looked like America." kieranhealy.org/blog/archive...

The ceremony room was the kind of place, if you are an academic like me, you might expect to be named “Salon C” or “Wabash Room” or “Sequoia East” and be the site of a sparsely-attended conference talk. The two main differences were the words stenciled on the slightly dropped ceiling, and the fact that the room was full up and alive with nervous energy. At the front of the room there was a large-screen TV. The person leading the ceremony—who, coincidentally, was the USCIS Officer who had interviewed me a couple of months ago—introduced himself and welcomed everyone. All the staff were dignified and low-key delighted. The ceremony opened with a two-minute video that consisted of Ken Burns effect pans over still images and with W.G. Snuffy Walden music underneath. The Statue of Liberty. Ellis Island. Immigrants arriving in the nineteenth century at various locations. And then photographs of the modern equivalents of those people. I began to worry that I might have something in my eye.

The room filled up. It looked just as you might imagine. Some people looked like me, which is to say a middle-aged Irish guy in a standard-issue blazer and tie. There was a guy from Ghana in an immaculate suit. A couple from Algeria held their baby son. A family from the Republic of the Congo had their three young sons sit in the guest area. The boys all wore identical red-white-and-blue check. A German man looked dapper in a lavender shirt. An Indian woman had a green and gold sari. A Chinese family all in a row. A Romanian delightedly offering to take pictures of anyone in need of a photo. A Mexican man in cream-colored linen. A Peruvian woman’s bold floral dress. A family whose two children were wearing tiny plastic Stars and Stripes cowboy hats. It looked like America.

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Toby Hodges @tobyhodges.carpentries.org · 13/05/2025

I am at #CollabW25 in beautiful Stirling 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 this week. This is my first Collaborations Workshop and I am delighted to be able to join an event that so many have told me great things about in the past 🎉

An old stone bridge across a river. The bridge has four arches and pointed pillars either side of the entrances on each end. The sky is clear and fresh grass is growing on the riverbanks.

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Toby Hodges @tobyhodges.carpentries.org · 29/01/2025

Chinese firms ‘distilling’ US AI models to create rival products, warns OpenAI www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

An electron micrograph of a tardigrade modified to show the creature appearing to play a violin, with a superimposed scale indicator labelled 100 micrometers

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Toby Hodges @tobyhodges.carpentries.org · 10/12/2024

Check out the curriculum: carpentries.github.io/lesson-devel... Learn more about the training: carpentries.org/lesson-devel...

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Toby Hodges @tobyhodges.carpentries.org · 10/12/2024

After 276 pull requests, just under 1000 commits, and almost three years, we made our first stable release of the @thecarpentries.bsky.social Collaborative Lesson Development Training curriculum today 🎉 zenodo.org/records/1436...

A plot of lines added and deleted each week in the carpentries/lesson-development-training project on GitHub, showing prominent spikes in development activity in January and June 2022 (both 2000-3000 lines added); July, August, and October 2023 (4000 lines added and 4000 removed in July), and November 2024 (4300 lines added, 1800 lines removed).

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Toby Hodges @tobyhodges.carpentries.org · 12/11/2024

#CCHD24 kicked off today at EMBL, with an amazing coincidence: the dates perfectly coincide with the 10 year anniversary of the first Software Carpentry workshop run at EMBL! We celebrated the anniversary, with thanks to @luispedrocoelho.bsky.social and others who hosted/taught in Nov 2014!

Lisanna Paladin in the EMBL Large Operon auditorium, presenting a slide to celebrate "10 years of Carpentries & Bio-IT". Slide text reads "This community event happens to be the perfect occasion to celebrate our long standing partnership! 12 -14 November 2014: first Software Carpentry course at EMBL. To provide essential programming and data skills to 22 participants. Instructors: Holger Dinkel, Luis Pedro Coelho, Florian Huber, Thomas Wolf, and Markus H-Y Fritz. Organizers: Luis Pedro Coelho, Aidan Budd, and Gwen Sanderson"

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Toby Hodges @tobyhodges.carpentries.org · 10/10/2024

Reminds me of this XKCD that I was once so delighted to read.

You just WON The Game. It's okay! You're free!

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Toby Hodges @tobyhodges.carpentries.org · 16/09/2024

A perfect album which came out when I was 21. If you get tired of your boyfriend's things / There's always other boys, there's always other boyfriends

The cover art of The Hold Steady's 2006 album, Boys and Girls in America.

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Toby Hodges @tobyhodges.carpentries.org · 29/08/2024

Next week I will finally see Martha live, after eight years or so of waiting 🥹🇬🇧🔥

A tour poster for Martha's 2024 UK & EIRE Tour, featuring a cartoon of two people smoking cigarettes, standing next to a flaming wheelie bin draped in a union flag of the United Kingdom.

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Toby Hodges @tobyhodges.carpentries.org · 18/01/2024

The most unrealistic thing in Raymond Briggs' The Snowman is not that the snowman can walk or fly, it's that he melts away with such grace.

An illustration of a boy and a snowman flying, from Raymond Briggs' The Snowman.

An illustration of a boy standing over the melted remains of his snowman built the previous day, with hat, scarf and coal in a neat pile on top of the melted snow, from Raymond Briggs' The Snowman.

A photograph of a real melted snowman, covered in dirt and strands of brown grass, leaning awkwardly to one side, with the remains of the head fallen onto the floor.

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