Some journals sound like they should be bands. Whereas some journal titles ARE in fact the same as band names. I wondered… how many journal titles are also band names. Let’s find out! The journals cited in PubMed could be downloaded as a text file from here. This list includes every MEDLINE journal – even […]
Category: adventures in code
Tips from the Blog XV: locating the php.ini file for WordPress on Raspberry Pi
If I struggle to find the answer to something, it must be worth a post to help out others. So, here’s where to find the php.ini file on a standard WordPress install on Raspberry Pi. I installed a LAMP stack and WordPress on a Raspberry Pi following these excellent instructions. The aim was to import […]
Os Mutantes: an implausible naming system for SARS-CoV-2 mutants
The scientific response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been astounding. Aside from efforts to generate vaccines, the genomic surveillance of the virus has been truly remarkable. For example, the nextstrain project has sequence many SARS-CoV-2 genomes. In fact, the rapid identification of multiple new strains and mutations by diverse groups of scientists has resulted in […]
Crackerblocks: computing solutions for IQ Block game
The IQ Block game is a puzzle where the player must fit eight shapes into a square space. The challenge is to find as many ways as possible to do it. The box says there are more than 40 solutions! So how many are there? I wrote a solver to crack the IQ Block game. […]
I’ve Gotta Get A Message To You: automated emails from Raspberry Pi zero
I have a long-running project to make timelapse movies using a Raspberry Pi Zero with camera module. I’m capturing a countryside view and have images for two years. The uptime on the Pi is seriously impressive, but nonetheless I wanted to upgrade the Pi so that it would send me updates of how it’s going, […]
Tips From The Blog XIV: embedded file locations in an Adobe Illustrator file
I was working on a figure in Adobe Illustrator today. The ai file had 32 embedded TIFF files (we tend to embed images rather than linking them for portability reasons). I wanted to change all of the images, but to do this I needed to know where the originals were. Clicking on the file shows […]
Represent: geographical breakdown of a virtual seminar series
During the pandemic, many virtual seminar programmes have popped up. One series, “Motors in Quarantine“, has been very successful. It’s organised by my colleagues Anne Straube, Alex Zwetsloot and Huong Vu. Anne wanted to know if attendees of the seminar series were a fair representation of the field. We know the geographical location of the […]
Say It Ain’t So: using Weezer album cover colours in R
I’m a long-term fan of Weezer. Such was the brilliance of their first two albums that I have stuck with them through thick and thin. And dear me, there has been some very thin music. Nonetheless I own every album – thirteen of them. Among them are six albums entitled “Weezer”. These records are colloquially […]
Find The Answer Within: using grep to find lost code
A short tech-tip this week. How can you find a line of code somewhere on your computer? I often find that I need to write a line of code and I can’t remember the exact syntax. To add to the frustration, I can remember writing a similar line before, but can’t remember in which file […]
Walk This Way
Over the holidays, I had an idea about looping an animation between two images. I wrote some code to do this in Igor Pro (sorry, no R this time…). This post describes how the code works and how you can make a similar animation. There was a reason to do this animation, but as a […]