How I keep my Heroku web-app’s data up-to-date automatically
Scientists, open source developers, and basically probably most people, have to deal with one common obstacle in life: lack of funds to do all the stuff.
In particular in science and open source software, we cannot be bothered to maintain the stuff we left behind (at least, not on the boss’s time). It’s a never-ending quest towards novelty. People just tend to be more forthcoming in the wallet area when fancy new features or knowledge are promised.
This is why it is vital that we automate the crap out of everything we humanly can, especially if what we built is…
How to build a bot to show Covid-19 vaccination progress
Twitter bots have a really bad rep. Troll armies, spam, fake news… You name it, a bot’s done it.
But what if we could harness their powers for good? Use bots to inform people in a fun way? That would be science outreach! It’s all in a name.
Of course, Covid-19 is on everybody’s mind, but the tide of horribility (it’s a word) is slowly turning into one of hope and recovery. We’re not out of the woods yet, but we are jabbing our way out, one vaccine at a time.
Part III of the Fitness for nerds series.
I’m not really sure how I got to this workout anymore, but for some reason, it really appealed to me. This Roam Strong article (my first Google hit) further provided me a practical way to build up to the actual workout and I’ve been doing that for two weeks now.
Editor’s note (I’m the editor, teehee): I started writing this in July 2020, so “now” was then.
For those that are unfamiliar with One Punch Man (hyphenate to your own liking): this comic book and animated cartoon character has such extraordinary punching power that any enemy is defeated with one…
Build interactive web apps with polling data, Voilà & Heroku
Some time ago, I wrote about how the popular Dutch political compass site Kieskompas works, just before the Dutch provincial elections.
Now, with the general elections coming up in March, I like to obsessively keep my eyes on the polls (although the past week I’ve mostly been obsessing over US election results, but I’ll return to Dutch politics next week, I guess). My usual source for these is Peilingwijzer, which combines three of the biggest polls.
Looking at the party numbers is interesting and all. However, as a civilized democracy (political jab intended), the Netherlands has a many-party system where…
Written for minimalists — Part II.b of the Fitness for nerds series.
My previous post on minimalist physical exercise was a 10 minute read. The irony of this did not elude the minimalists of Reddit.
For them, I wrote this minimalist version. We aim to please.
The best minimalist physical exercises are (barefoot) running and body weight exercises.
For both of these, I’ll list some advantages and tips that I found useful as a desk worker, computer nerd and someone who generally has no intrinsic interest in sports or physical activity for its own sake.
Running
Pros
Part II of the Fitness for nerds series.
Edit 7 Sep 2020: minimalist rewrite of this article here.
I like minimalism. Clean desk, no-paper, closing unused browser tabs, you name it. And I’ve more or less applied it to my physical exercise as well, almost all my life. At least in hindsight. Most importantly, it’s a convenient theme for weaving this post into a nice story under a conveniently catchy title.
For example, in judo, aikido and some other martial arts, a central principle is to use your opponent’s strength against them. This — apparently — is called aiki. …
Part I of the Fitness for nerds series.
I’m honestly not sure what help this would be to you.
Maybe you’ll recognize something of your own situation and think: if this moron can do this sportsing, I sure as hell can do it a lot better. Maybe as a psychologist you’ll recognize the telltale signs of mental illness like megalomania, narcisism or just general madness. Either would be best case scenarios.
In any case, I already wrote it down, so I’m just going to publish it.
So, here goes!
As a general geek and later scientist / programmer, physical fitness hasn’t typically been on my radar much. I…
Part 0.
I have no intrinsic interest in sports. I don’t really want to watch any, nor do I feel the need to play or perform most of it. I mean, I’m not against sports, it can be a nice social activity. But just sports for sports’ sake? Meh.
However, I do care about health, staying alive as long as possible and also about being productive and feeling good. As it turns out — and honestly, I’m still skeptical on this — it seems like physical activity may actually help bring about all these things. Huh.
When you work at a desk…
I want to start blogging more often again.
I’ve really enjoyed it in the past and feel like it will motivate me to dig into side projects more deeply. Trying to explain things to first myself and then others (after pressing the Publish button) really helps to keep momentum going.
However, I’m not quite sure where to start, especially when it comes to which platform to use. This article is mainly just meant for me to sort out my thoughts.
And then, why not share it? Who knows, maybe it’ll help you too.
Past: Blogger.com and WordPress
I used to blog quite a lot.
Tools and practices for collaborating from home
One of the core values of the Netherlands eScience Center is collaboration. We work with teams and even whole communities of scientists. Communication is key.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us into social isolation. But we simply cannot do our jobs in complete isolation. Luckily, we don’t have to, as many people that have suddenly been sent to work from home are finding out.
In this post, I’ll briefly list some of the tools and practices we’ve adopted the past few days to keep collaboration going.
Disclaimer: we pay Microsoft for the Office 365 stack, so we’re a bit biased…
