5 days ago

ILS, Follow the Glide Slope

How to build a controller that automatically puts an airplane on the glide slope from the beam of the Instrument Landing System (ILS) in GeoFS, the flight simulator?

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8 days ago

ILS, Follow the Localizer

How to construct a controller that automatically aligns an airplane with the runway using the deviation from the localizer beam of the Instrument Landing System (ILS) in GeoFS, the browser-based flight simulator?

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22 days ago

Where is the Runway?

Can’t spot the runway in GeoFS, the browser-based flight simulator? I fixed it by extending GeoFS with Google Maps, showing thousands of airports, as well as the extended centerline of the runway at the destination on the map.

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36 days ago

Virtualizing the Controllers

A little quest to get every single button on my throttle quadrant to work with GeoFS, the browser-based flight simulator. A quest that not only taught me a little bit about evdev in Linux, but also led to many more quests later on.

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37 days ago

Controls, Yours Or Mine?

Discovering all kind of difficulties of controlling the aircraft in the GeoFS flight simulator. As well as some remedies, whether in adjustments to software, hardware, or simply through deliberate practice.

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37 days ago

Foraying into Flight Simulation and Control

A session with the flight simulator turned into a both entertaining and educational quest into control theory. Topics that I haven’t dabbled with for one, two, or even more decades. From a self-imposed lockdown to my first attempts to use PID controllers and fuzzy logic for steering the aircraft in GeoFS.

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1173 days ago

Pomodoro Timer: Prototype, Round 3

The “pomodoro technique” is a simple time management method, which requires a robust, simple-to-use timer, which doesn’t distract from the task at hand. For the third version, I constructed a plywood case to house the microcontroller, the 4-digit display, and the two buttons to control the timer.

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1206 days ago

Pub combinatorics: the joy of rediscovery

Learning is often a process of rediscovering things. I enjoyed this process recently when trying to solve a combinatorial puzzle, in the pub, in the bus, and at home. A tale of allowing myself to explore, to tinker, and to be awed by the great thinkers of long gone times.

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1220 days ago

Quick-fix: Typing ÄÖÜ on a UK Keyboard

UK keyboards, for good reasons, do not come with keys for ÄÖÜ. Here is a quick-and-dirty fix to customize the xkb symbols map, tested on on Arch Linux.

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1235 days ago

Pomodoro Timer: Prototype, Round 2

The “pomodoro technique” is a simple time management method, which requires a robust, simple-to-use timer, which doesn’t distract from the task at hand. After the first prototype with the ATmega32-based RN-Control v1.4 experimental board, I built another prototype: this time with a 4-digit display.

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1282 days ago

Pomodoro Timer: Prototype with an ATmega32

The “pomodoro technique” is a simple time management method, however in my opinion completely lacks support from something essential: a robust, simple-to-use timer, which doesn’t distract from the task at hand. Thus, I built a prototype with the ATmega32-based RN-Control v1.4 experimental board.

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1515 days ago

Right control key on keyboard as i3 modifier in Ubuntu 20.04

If you ever wanted to use the right Ctrl button in Ubuntu 20.04 as an i3 modifier, and struggled with xmodmap, try editing the modifier mappings directly in /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/pc. It’s dirty, and may fail during software update─but meh until then it appears to work.

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1839 days ago

A formula for converting pace from min/mile to min/km in Google Spreadsheets

If you are a runner and desperate for a quick-and-dirty formula you can use in a Google Spreadsheet to convert running pace from minutes per mile into minutes per kilometer, this nerdy post will give the formula to you.

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1908 days ago

Visualizing Strava activities with BigQuery and Google Data Studio

How to load Strava activities into Google Cloud BigQuery and visualizing the activities with Google Data Studio? This article is for (hobby) athletes interested in taking a walk through the Strava API, Google Cloud Platform and Google Data Studio; showing how to gain the freedom to explore and visualize the data you have been sweating for over years.

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2172 days ago

Thoughts on Model Thinking: a smörgåsbord

A review of Scott Page’s Model Thinking course, which has been overall entertaining, inspiring, informative albeit at times a bit repetitive when going through arithmetics. If you are interested in trying to make sense out of the complex world around you, this course might be for you.

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2483 days ago

Statistics tell you when to stop practicing

Assume you are practicing for an exam. You could spend all your time left until the exam practicing (possibly too much), or you could spend almost no time practicing (likely too little). So how do you know when enough is enough? When can you stop practicing and yet be confident that you will pass the exam?

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2537 days ago

Applying Machine Learning to Strava activities using BigQuery ML

Today, I’ll demo how to train a logistic regression model in BigQuery ML. That is Machine Learning models written in SQL, and executed in BigQuery.

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2593 days ago

Inspecting air pollution data from OpenAQ using Colab, Pandas, and BigQuery

OpenAQ is publishing real-time air quality data from around the world to BigQuery. Today, I have poked around in the dataset to inspect air quality from many places of the world.

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2719 days ago

What probability theory tells you about starting on time

Whether you are an event organizer waiting for participants to turn up or whether you are a bus driver waiting for passengers running to catch the bus, there is a dilemma: if you are so kind and wait for everyone to arrive, you make everyone else wait. Let’s explain the dilemma with probability theory.

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2813 days ago

Analysing Strava activities using Colab, Pandas & Matplotlib (Part 4)

How do you analyse Strava activities—such as runs or bike rides—with Colab, Python, Pandas, and Matplotlib? In my fourth article on this topic, let’s invite scikit-learn and NLTK to the party, and apply some Machine Learning.

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2832 days ago

Analysing Strava activities using Colab, Pandas & Matplotlib (Part 3)

How do you analyse Strava activities—such as runs or bike rides—with Colab, Python, Pandas, and Matplotlib? In my third article on this topic, I am demonstrating how to visualize the data in different ways.

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2846 days ago

Analysing Strava activities using Colab, Pandas & Matplotlib (Part 2)

How do you analyse Strava activities—such as runs or bike rides—with Colab, Python, Pandas, and Matplotlib? In my second article on this topic, I am demonstrating how to group and aggregate the data in many different ways.

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2850 days ago

Analysing Strava activities using Colab, Pandas & Matplotlib (Part 1)

How do you analyse Strava activities—such as runs or bike rides—with Colab, Python, Pandas, and Matplotlib? In this post, I am demonstrating how to get started, and will give you a taster of what is possible with this state-of-the-art technology for data analysis.

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2901 days ago

Misleading infographics: How Not To Bubble Chart

I discovered a misleading infographic on mortality cause by gender in the OECD report “Health at a Glance 2017” while working on a course assignment. A few notes on how not to do bubble charts.

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3064 days ago

Memories from University: Teaching the Computer to play Connect Four

How do you teach a computer to play games? I took a classic brute-force approach along with some techniques to make the search for a good move faster. Can you beat the machine?

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