Ever wanted to use Latex but worried about bloating your system with tons of packages? This was the exact situation I found myself in whilst trying to install TexMaths for LibreOffice ! I have used docker-based latex before through the VSCode extension LatexWorkshop and this has worked very well. So, why not “install” latex directly on my computer? This post will guide you through creating a…
Building a website allows you to showcase your skills and interests, but sometimes, a static page can feel impersonal. One way to add personality and visual interest is by incorporating a bookshelf element. This blog post will guide you through creating a functional bookshelf using CSS ( bookshelf.css ), JavaScript ( bookshelf.js ), and HTML ( index.html ). The source files can be found at…
This article is a short dive into a recent journal publication of mine titled Optimal Path Planning Using Psychological Profiling in Drone-assisted Missing Person Search . Search and Rescue (SAR) operations are inherently time-sensitive endeavors, and this urgency amplifies when it involves locating vulnerable missing individuals like children or elderly people suffering from dementia. Classic…
Back in 2022 I did a comparison of some of the most well known python data class libraries in various categories. In this blog post I came to the conclusion that pydantic was only apt for less performant applications. However, with the release of Pydantic v2 in late June of 2023 touting 5-50x speed improvements compared to v1 due to a rewrite of the core logic in Rust . So in the face of these new…
Reddit recently introduced insane API changes, akin to those introduced by twitter, that are essentially forcing all 3rd party app creators to take down their products. Apollo was the first (as far as I am aware) with my personal favourite, BaconReader also following along. Thousands of subreddits partook in a protest but with no sign of the Reddit leadership reversing the changes (or at least…
I’m currently marking exams digitally. All the questions are merged into a single PDF so I wanted to count how many I had marked without manually going back through. I couldn’t quickly find something on StackOverflow and that’s how this very simple, but effective, counter came to be.
You can access the results of this blog here I live in Scotland and I have been getting constant messages about the Northern Lights in the sky from my Mum. I really want to see them but have to travel out of the city to escape the light polution. I recently discovered that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have service that provideds up to date Aurora forecasts for both…
Some useful LaTex one-liners that I’ve accumulated over the years. You can also find these tools here Show all errors, warnings, and undefined messages Very basic but useful to analyse a log file after compilation with location in log file for further analysis grep -iHEn "error|warning|undefined" * .log Find all the duplicated labels in a directory Useful if referencing a figure results in…
Today I learned about a handy tool for jekyll called jekyll-compose . This lets you automatically create post and draft files for jekyll with generated front-matter . This is a really cool tool and I’d reccommend anyone using jekyll to have a look! Is it going to save you time? Probably not. Does it remove the nuissance of manually creating posts, and moving drafts about? Yes! What a treat.…
Plausible is a great alternative to Google Analytics if you want to havbe the option of analytics but actually respect your users privacy. Along with that bold statement, Plausible actually offers a whole range of benefits: Guaranteed to be in the region you expect it to be EU if not self-hosted, else whereever you desire This is especially true for GDPR and other data collection laws…