My wrap up of interesting/practical machine learning of 2020
As part of my work (but also personal interest) I try to stay on top of not just the research side of machine learning (ML — what many folks think of as part of...
Shane-anigans Nothing but Shane-anigans
Not Quite Open Source: Why Some Businesses are Developing Source Available
Source Available: What is It? Before we get into the “why” or “why not,” let’s first discuss “what it is.” Source available making the source code available to customers and possibly to users, even...
Converting shapefiles into GeoJSON (for Elasticsearch)
This blog is all about finding, converting, and adding geo data from a commonly found format (shapefiles) to a format that can be used by json engines like Elasticsearch. Finding Data Open geo data...
Open Source Business Models
Background This is a blog I’ve wanted to write for a long time. In fact, I’ve written and rewritten it several times, leaving it in draft stage every time as I’ve reworked my own...
Top Tips on Working from Home
I’m writing this at the time of a worldwide pandemic of COVID-19. We’re facing rapid spread of the disease and in the hopes of retaining healthy employees, many employers are providing their workforce with...
Baby Naming Project
tl;dr: you can get a new person/car/pet/whatever naming app now at https://github.com/eskibars/lentil-namer As a first-time dad-to-be, one of the things I’ve noticed is that the first thing anyone asks you about your baby is...
Tracking Nearby Ships with SDR, Elasticsearch, Kibana, and Vega Visualizations
Intro A year ago, I moved nearer to Golden Gate Bridge and seeing the ships come in made me wonder how they’re tracked. I had seen websites like this one, and was curious how...
Combining Tasker with Elasticsearch and Kibana for Personal Dashboards
Tasker is probably my favorite Android app. It gives you total control over your device. Not to mention there’s a great community that develops all sorts of interesting tasks/integrations. I was recently on a...
Connecting Domoticz and Elasticsearch
I use Domoticz for my home automation needs. I’ll just start off by saying it has its pros and cons. Pros: It seems to have pretty wide device support It allows for a completely...
Recruiters’ new (spam) tools
Intro I’ve recently been getting a slew of e-mails from recruiters. Horray! Right? Except…no. Don’t get me wrong: we all have jobs and I’m happy to get e-mails from recruiters. The issue is that...
Government debt, GDP growth, and taxes, oh my!
Government debt sounds scary! If debt is bad on an individual basis, shouldn’t we seek to eliminate debt? And “you can’t spend your way out of debt!” Except all of this is a pretty simplistic...