A quick post about a puzzle called Wordle that is currently taking over the internet. It’s a mastermind-like game where the object is to guess an unknown 5-letter word. Puzzlers are encouraged to share their results after completing a puzzle. Here is an example for puzzle 192. So how do you know if your performance […]
Category: fun
Untitled: “The structural basis of…” titles for structural biology papers
This recent tweet made me chuckle. It does seem that many structural biology papers have a title that begins “The structural basis of…”. I took a quick PubMed survey to look at its popularity. First a search of “structural basis”[ti] AND “journal article”[pt] gives us the number of research papers with “structural basis” in the […]
Target II: Monitoring a running goal in R
As 2021 draws to a close, it’s time to check back in on a previous post. As a recap, Garmin Connect offered four challenges to run 3 x 505 km and 1 x 505 km, one in each of the four quarters of 2021. Completing all four would mean running 2021 km in 2021. I […]
Seles II: Tennis coding challenge solution
In a previous post, I described a coding challenge sent to me by my colleague. Here is the challenge again: There is a tennis match between two players denoted 1, and 2. You are given a sequence of 1s and 2s whereby each number denotes a point won by player 1 or player 2 (e.g. […]
Seles: Tennis coding challenge
A colleague sent me a coding challenge. This is a short post to describe how I tackled it. Edit: a follow-up post is here. This is the challenge: There is a tennis match between two players denoted 1, and 2. You are given a sequence of 1s and 2s whereby each number denotes a point […]
Under The Same Name: Journal titles and band names
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 […]
Play The Game: Retropie in a Retroflag GPi case
The Retropie project is a wonderful way to play retro games on a Raspberry Pi (see previous post). A number of handheld units are available to make a convincing retro gaming experience. One of these is the Retroflag GPi case, modelled on Nintendo’s Game Boy. It’s possible to order one of these pre-built and even […]
Blue Monday: sampling the sky
I have a long-running project Raspberry Pi project to make time-lapse movies of a countryside view (see previous posts). It’s been running for over two years and the results are great. The camera takes images every ten minutes and by assembling movies with different time intervals, you can see seasons change, trees growing or the […]
You Better Run: recovering from injury
Reading about someone else’s recovery-after-injury story can be a bit dull. At least that was my conclusion after pressing delete on my story a moment ago. Having spared you the details, the summary is: I got injured. It hurt. It took me a year to recover because I didn’t tackle the recovery properly. Measuring recovery […]
Target: monitoring a running goal in R
Many running races and events have been cancelled or disrupted due to the pandemic. To fill the void, I’ve been taking on Garmin’s “Challenges”. In Garmin Connect, you can accept a challenge set by Garmin (I think users can challenge each other too). Completion of these challenges gives the user points, which I’ve become somewhat […]