Jilly MacKay - The blog

Return of the Mat

You may have noticed a recent uptick in the number…

Adopter’s Regret

This blog is about my new preprint, Adopter’s Regret: An Autoethnographic Approach to the Post Animal Adoption Period

Bayesian Imposters

Sometimes, in conversation, people will ask “What do you do?” and they really just expect a one or two word answer. I struggle with this question. ‘Lecturer’ implies that…

Still Recording Lectures

Can you believe I…

The Good Mum Project

This post contains discussion about post-partum anxiety/depression. If that’s not for you today, come back another time. <3

February Newsletter - One More Day

I’m going to leave this post as-is for reference, but I have since had a chat with Student Voice.ai and they’ve gone a long way to reassuring me that what they do would be…

January Newsletter - Out With the Old, In With the Plagues

Well, we made it precisely two weeks into January before we were all hit by another nursery plague.

December Newsletter - You Better Watch Out

Honestly, December was a bit of a write-off. Early in the month my daughter brought a nasty bug home from nursery. We ended up in A&E and eventually in paediatrics for a…

November Newsletter - National Novel Writing Month

Having got my fourth paper of the year (and first first-author paper!) out I confess to feeling a bit of relief. I returned from…

October Newsletter - Pumpkin Spice Season

Two days late and a penny short for the October newsletter, my only defence being that this is a blog and it doesn’t really matter.

September Newsletter - Give No Quarto

If you’re a regular visitor, first off, I’m sorry, the loss of Twitter…

Reflections on posit conf(2023)

I really can’t believe I spoke at posit::conf(2023)!.

How to make a professionally sexy quarto presentation

For posit::conf(2023) I spent a ridiculous amount of time formatting my quarto slides and figuring out how to host them (easily) on github pages. This post summarises that process.

August Newsletter - Fringe Ideas

Listening to a podcast (Scamanda) on the way home from nursery, I was struck by the host’s need to explain the blogosphere to the audience. Bloggers were apparently the original influencers, who knew? In…

Quality Assurance is Not Morally Neutral

As I’ve been preparing to take on the role of Chair of the R(D)SVS Quality Assurance and Enhancement Committee, I’ve been thinking about what quality assurance means to me, and what quality assurance isn’t.

July Newsletter - State of the Web 2023

Are we all Xcited for the new Twitter rebrand? I’ve seen a lot of good thinkpieces/blogs about the state of the web at the moment, particularly with regards to social…

Building ggplot2 colour palettes, the UoEColouR package case study

I visit Emil Hvitfeldt’s excellent resource cataloguing ggplot2 colour palettes at least once a week, and I usually go back to the same two packages (Nord and LaCroixColoR). The last few times I visited I’ve noticed a…

The State of Fluffy Sciences

I don’t know yet what will become of the old FluffySciences. I think there is merit to both archival and deletion. But for now, it’s a goodbye to FluffySciences, and I hope you’ll join me here

Standard Setting Non-Existent Exams

The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) released its exam results this week to huge uproar. This is a fascinating, and horrifyingglimpse into…

You Should Record Your teaching

I’m about to go on two weeks annual leave so this is an excellent time for me to drop this particular post. Thanks to MichTheMartian on Twitter for reaching out and making me realise I haven’t ever really…

Lessons in Course Design

By some counts (i.e. the number I list on my CV) I’ve led the design of about thirty higher education courses over…