News

The latest about what I've been working on

Optimizing Wordle guesses
Optimizing Wordle guesses

I’ve recently started playing the viral word game “Wordle”. After numerous discussions among family members about guessing strategy, I decided to spend some time over the holiday weekend writing a Python script to play with different guessing algorithms and strategies.

IIIF implementation
IIIF implementation

In connection with uploading files to Wikimedia Commons as part of our WikiProject Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery, I’ve been working on the details of uploading images to the Vanderbilt LibrariesCantaloupe International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) server and providing IIIF manifests to describe them.

Uploading with Commonsbot
Uploading with Commonsbot

A few months ago, as part of our WikiProject Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery, we received permission to upload Public Domain works from the Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery to Wikimedia Commons, where they will be more accessible to the public.

Latest Posts

Open Science recipes published
Open Science recipes published

My colleage from the Vanderbilt Libraries’ Digital Lab, Shenmeng Xu, an I have published two chapters in the ACRL’s 2025 Open Science Cookbook. The Cookbook is a lighthearted take on technical topics where instructions are given in “recipe” format to teach beginners new tech skills.

Favorite winners of Nebula Award for Best Novel
Favorite winners of Nebula Award for Best Novel

In March 2025, I finished reading all 60 of the winners of the the Nebula Award for Best Science Fiction or Fantasy novel. Many of my favorites were also winners of the Hugo Award, so I wrote a follow-up blog post to my earlier post about my favorite Hugo winners, focusing on favorites that weren’t already discussed in the Hugo post.

Favorite winners of Hugo Award for Best Novel
Favorite winners of Hugo Award for Best Novel

In May 2023, I finished reading all 71 of the winners of the the Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction or Fantasy novel. There were some fantastic books on that list and some real duds.