Pulling Election Count data out of Google Sheets for fun and democracy

Messing around with Elections NI data Sources: Live Data (for 2023) 2022 Assembly Elections Creating your own Google Sheet and referencing the crowdsourced data The above linked spreadsheets are naturally not editable by everyone; this is great for reliable data but isn’t so great when you want to make pretty graphs. Google Sheets supports the live referencing of external sheets in your own sheets, so you can ‘import’ the data from the read-only sheets as they evolve over the count, and then reference those data in your own visualisations. ...

May 18, 2023 · Andrew Bolster

Abracadabra - NI Assembly's Plans to have 60% more PhD Researchers

I was skimming through the Oral Statement from yesterday’s Assembly, with a specific interest in Dr Stephen Farry’s discussions on the NI Economic Activity Baseline Report (everyone loves Baseline reports these days, but very few ever seem to get followed up…) can came across a Question and Response between Sammy Douglas (E. Belfast) and Dr Farry. Mr Douglas: […]Will he outline what his Department is doing to ensure that we are educating our young people in the skills that the workforce needs? ...

April 10, 2013 · Andrew Bolster

Happy New Year

So, what are they going to do with all those ‘NI 2012: Our Time Out Place’ things? Is it no longer our place? Are we joining up with the republic or the mainland or something? Are we all getting deported?! I DON’T WANT TO BE DEPORTED! Who am I Kidding, yes, I do, this place sucks sometimes between flegs and riots and expenses and planning permission and investment funds and floods. Thanks to those who made 2012 suck less, especially everyone who has contributed to Farset and all that jazz, it really has been a dream come true. ...

December 31, 2012 · Andrew Bolster

Best Description of Northern Ireland I've heard yet

Northern Ireland, its history, and its current situation, are a guaranteed topic of conversation to any self-identifying Northern Irishman, especially one travelling around Europe. As I am neither a historian, a bigot, or particularly political, I don’t know a whole pile of detail, so my explanations become rambling personal perspectives which I generally suspect make things less-clear; otherwise I dumb it down so much that the point is kinda mixed, usually ending something like ‘its weird; its British, but we get to be Irish too, except without being quite so broke’. ...

August 4, 2011 · Andrew Bolster

Shared Items - 12/05/2010

Designing next steps Surprise! It’s a hung Parliament. What Sites Future Employers Are Checking When Looking at You [Job Search] Syslog Better Logging Tutorial Open Source Guacamole Puts VNC On the Web

May 12, 2010 · Andrew Bolster

Peter Mandelson... TV Producer, Spin-doctor, Politician, Tosser

For a man who’s title is currently Baron Mandelson, _of Foy in the County of Herefordshire and of Hartlepool in the County of Durham, _First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, President of the Board of Trade and Lord President of the Council, educated in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and is hotly tipped to become a major part of the Lisbon-Treaty-generated-unelected-cou-detat-european-super-parliment, you’d think the power-addicted, peace-process screwing, ‘shreud loaning’ rat would leave well enough alone. ...

November 25, 2009 · Andrew Bolster