update README and status

Author: mmcky

README.md

@@ -1,3 +1,16 @@
-# lecture-tools-techniques
+# Tools & Techniques for Computational Economics
 
-Tools & Techniques for Computational Economics
+This website presents a set of lectures on the tools and techniques required to study computational economics.
+
+## Jupyter notebooks
+
+Jupyter notebook versions of each lecture are available for download
+via the website.
+
+## Contributions
+
+To comment on the lectures please add to or open an issue in the issue tracker (see above).
+
+We welcome pull requests!  
+
+Please read the [QuantEcon style guide](https://manual.quantecon.org/intro.html) first, so that you can match our style.

lectures/status.md

@@ -18,5 +18,17 @@ This table contains the latest execution statistics.
 
 (status:machine-details)=
 
-These lectures are built on `linux` instances through `github actions` so are
-executed using the following [hardware specifications](https://docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/specifications-for-github-hosted-runners#supported-runners-and-hardware-resources)
+These lectures are built on `linux` instances through `github actions`. 
+
+These lectures are using the following python version
+
+```{code-cell} ipython
+!python --version
+```
+
+and the following package versions
+
+```{code-cell} ipython
+:tags: [hide-output]
+!conda list
+```