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I was late. The minibus was already at the stop. I did something I very rarely do and broke into a run. I was the last one there. I was shown into a minibus that, at first glance, appeared to have no spare seats in it. The driver indicated a space at the back that would have suited a small child if they had been prepared to rough it a …

Connections The new daily game at the New York Times is called Connections, and I’ve seen a few people comment that they just don’t like it as much as Wordle or Spelling Bee. That the difficulty is inconsistent and it often makes you just feel stupid. I thought it would be interesting to contrast this to Word Dad, a puzzle game made by my friend, master game designer John Cutter. …

A model I return to a lot when talking about engineering processes is Push and Pull. Often when we design a new process or system we struggle to get buy-in. That lack of buy-in can often be traced to having forgotten the Push, the Pull, or both. We’re all familiar with processes like “write a weekly status update” that start strong and eventually fade out to low participation, engineers automating …

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If you had to choose software to begin working in architectural design, which would be your first choice? Many might think that a BIM solution such as BlenderBIM or FreeCAD would be the ideal choice. In many cases, they offer numerous advantages. However, despite these advanced and modern workflows, a simple 2D CAD solution can still address most of our project needs. Using a 2D CAD solution has numerous benefits …

They say you can never go back again. Never cross the same river twice. The past is a foreign country, as the famous quotation goes. Sometimes, it can’t be avoided. Sometimes, though, it can be worth doing just for yourself.Read all

While all eyes have been on the two hurricanes, the wildfire smoke is still impacting many areas. It is quite visible today on the GOES images. The fires in the NW Territories of Canada this summer have released around 277 times the amount of carbon that area of Canada emitted in 2021! I’ve been a synoptic meteorologist for 43 years, and I’ve never seen a summer like this one. This …

Update on 8-29-2023 Last week, I put up a poll that asks users what they would do if faced with some ethical dilemmas that arise on the business side of data science. I'm presenting the first set of results here. I'm guessing the responses have stabilized but will provide further updates below should the trends shift. Case Study 1 Is it acceptable for BestHotels.com to present fake statistics to influence …

Hello! Just popping in very quickly in amongst wrapping a big parcel, making a packed lunch, sorting laundry, dashing out to the shops, and packing for a few days away (and trying to remember to breeeeathe). Life is busy. Sometimes hectic, but mostly just the kind of normal busy that comes at this point in the summer. Haircuts and new school shoes, outings and a birthday and mini holidays. Squeezing …

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Introduction This post has been sitting in my drafts folder for a long time. Sometime earlier this year I saw a job posting where someone wanted to use Apple’s vision framework to do text recognition. I wasn’t interested in the job but I was curious about the Vision framework as I had never used it before. In this article, I will take you through how I used PyObjC to interface …

So, it’s been almost a year since Steve Wright in the Afternoon came to an end. This popular Radio 2 show had been on air for nearly 24 years, and Steve Wright himself has been a constant presence on UK radio for nearly twice as long.I thought it was worth me looking back on this end of an era one year on from that event, and also one year on …

I recently encountered an open source project that hadn't received updates for a while. The issue tracker had ~200 open issues, ~70 open pull requests, and CI was partially failing. It's not uncommon for projects to go through lulls, and that's where this project was at. As is often the case, some person had posted an issue to ask "Is this project still maintained?" The person ended with this line: …

It was late 2013 when I drove past a little dog head with big floppy ears attached poking out of the long grass in the backwoods of Florida. My girlfriend at the time said we had to go back and get him, so we did. He was timid at first but friendly, and came right up to us when we approached. We took him home and fed him. I was …