tamarisk.it

Home assistant - cycle scenes with a single button

When I set up our lounge fan I had an excellent idea to add a physical switch that could control it. Initially this was setup to turn it on and off, but, given that this exists to parent and visitor proof the house I decided I would make it cycle

Section of handwritten notes

knowledge management

Using a Knowledge Management System

Using a personal knowledge management system has revitalised my learning and reinforced good habits.

Combined image showing the plastic box method of making cold brew next to a dedicated cold brew coffee pot

Too hot? Love Coffee? Lets make cold brew

It's hot outside, time to crack out the cold coffee. Remember, you don't need any special equipment to make cold brew.

Answering common code interview questions in Python 3

It's fairly common practice in interviews for the interviewee to be asked to present their answer to a reasonably simple coding problem in the language of their choice. As a result it can be good practice to work through some of these in preparation. The list I'm using is from

Three Placeholder Figures rendered in a row with automatic figure numbering displayed on the first (Fig 1) and last (Fig 3).

Automatically numbering Figures in Markdown

If you're writing academic style documents in Markdown/HTML it can be handy to be able to automatically number the figures. Here's how to do that using HTML and CSS.

QT Quick Tutorial: 3 Things To Do List Part 6 - Linking the Database

QT Quick Tutorial: 3 Things To Do List Part 6 - Linking the Database

In order to use the database we constructed in Part 5 we need to replace our DataModel with an SqlModel based on QSqlTableModel which implements most of the functionality we have in DataModel. Because we're using a database, the header file for SqlModel will be shorter than that of DataModel

Qt Quick Tutorial: 3 Things To Do List Part 5 - Adding a Database

Qt Quick Tutorial: 3 Things To Do List Part 5 - Adding a Database

Qt directly supports a local storage API which can be accessed via QtQuick.LocalStorage however we're going to construct our database functionality using C++ as that gives us more flexibility. Database design Before we start writing any code we need to consider what information should be in the database and

rsync everything

A quick post with the basics of rsync for those (like me) who forget the syntax on a regular basis.

Qt Quick Tutorial: 3 Things To Do List Part 4 - Interactivity

Qt Quick Tutorial: 3 Things To Do List Part 4 - Interactivity

At the end of Part 3 [https://tamarisk.it/qtquick-3-things-part-3] we had a to do list app that could show us a pre-populated list that we couldn't interact with. That's somewhat less useful than a piece of paper, so lets make it interactive. First up lets replace the Text element

Qt Quick Tutorial: 3 Things To Do List Part 3 - Filtering

Qt Quick Tutorial: 3 Things To Do List Part 3 - Filtering

At the end of Part 2 [qtquick-3-things-part-2] we had a todo list that output our dummy data regardless of the value set in today. To fix that we need to write a filter model. Create filtermodel.h and filtermodel.cpp and add them to CMakeLists as before. In order to

Qt Quick Tutorial: 3 Things To Do List Part 2 - Adding Data

Qt Quick Tutorial: 3 Things To Do List Part 2 - Adding Data

At the end of Part 1 [tamarisk.it/qt-quick-3-things-part-1/] we had a UI that statically produced a list of 3 identical to do's. In order to have multiple to do items we're going to switch out the Repeater we've been using to display our ToDoItem's for a ListView which requires

Qt Quick Tutorial: 3 Things To Do List Part 1 - Setup

Qt Quick Tutorial: 3 Things To Do List Part 1 - Setup

The 3 things todo list is based on the idea that you will be more productive if you pick just 3 things that you need to achieve each day. There are a few blog posts out there explaining the reasoning behind it such as The Power of the Three-Item To-Do

Connect an Arduino to a Rasberry Pi via an HC-05 Bluetooth Module

Walk through of how to connect an HC-05 bluetooth module to a Raspbery Pi and setting up a service to automatically connect the device on startup and disconnect.

Web Development

Deploying a React and Flask project on Ubuntu 18.04 using Nginx and uWSGI

Prerequities: * A server running Ubuntu 18.04 with a non-root user and firewall enabled. DigitalOcean have a good setup guide [https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/initial-server-setup-with-ubuntu-18-04] . * A registered domain name with the correct DNS settings * An existing React App Nginx Install: sudo apt install nginx Adjust firewall to allow

Writing a personal statment

Writing a personal statement for an application can be tricky, especially if all you have initially is some take on "because it's awesome!". To get past that first hurdle it can be tempting to just write that for the required length so, lets do it: def write_personal_statement(file_

What Do You Mean A Comma Is An Illegal Format String Specifier?

Learning Java at university: life lessons. Sometimes it's the silly things that have you stuck for longer than you'd like to admit.

Extremely basic JavaFX

A tiny bit of background Why JavaFX [https://openjfx.io/index.html]? Short answer: I'm doing an MSc in Computer Science and this is what we are learning. There are pros and cons to all frameworks see for example this discussion on Reddit [https://www.reddit.com/r/java/comments/

Welcome Week: Module Choices, Ice Breakers And Imposter Syndrome

My first week at university was somewhat different to the usual structure. I found myself reflecting on why I'm doing this and focusing myself very much on what I want to get out of it and how to get there.

Super Simple NGINX Security

It's super simple to put your site on lockdown using http basic authorisation and nginx. I mostly use this to allow clients to look at sites "live" without having the general public be able to see them until they've been signed off.

Running wxPython Inside a Python3 VirtualEnv

wxPython is notoriously difficult to get running inside a VirtualEnv, where instructions exist they focus on Python2 and tend to be (or at least appear) long and complicated. After a **lot** of fighting this is the simplest solution I came up with.

Why Computer Science?

Having graduated 15 years ago(!) with a humanities degree I occasionally get questions about why I'm going back to university to study Computer Science. As I'm planning on blogging my experiences I thought I'd start with why I've chosen to go back, and what inspired me in the first place.

Gantt Charts With Plotly

Gantt Charts With Plotly

Generating customised Gantt charts using Plotly in offline mode.

Using and Abusing .htaccess

Apache's .htaccess file is really powerful, but occasionally something of a dark art. Here are some things that I have used over the years, that work (for me anyway) along with hopefully detailed explanations of why they do what they do. RewriteEngine What's up with the inclusion of Options +FollowSymLinks?

The top of my bullet journal showing the word June on the left page and tasks on the right

Bullet Journaling Saved My Todo List

Paper lists have always failed me and my digital todo list was going the same way, with tasks festering undone for months on end. Bullet Journaling helped me fix it.

Hacking Femininity Part 1: Skincare

Having got tired of my face being constantly either dry and itchy or spotty or both I decided I should put aside my hatred of all things girly and actually investigate skincare. This post is skincare the geek way - researched (a bit anyway - it's quite hard to find