NotQuiteHere - tamarisk.it

Playing online chess - in physical space

Two use cases: Remote chess gamePlaying chess against an AIThoughts: moving the prices - magnets would make this more accessible than a robot arm (though that would be cool1) it would also mean that the players could pick either colour.because the pieces would need to be slid there also

Skate Sharp Tracker

A period tracker for skate sharpening!

Raspberry Pi

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.A registered domain name with the correct DNS settingsAn existing React AppNginxInstall:sudo apt install nginxAdjust firewall to allow traffic:sudo ufw app listOutput: Available applications: Nginx Full Nginx HTTP

2022 Watched List

Stuff I watched in 2022.

2022 Read List

Things I read in 2022.

Python

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_

Daft Ideas

Toilet paper ... art?

A toilet roll where each sheet is an image of Banksy’s work.

Java

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.

Java

Extremely basic JavaFX

A tiny bit of backgroundWhy JavaFX? 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. However, I need to know this one so there's no real benefit to

University

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.

Python

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.

University

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.

Python

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. RewriteEngineWhat's up with the inclusion of Options +FollowSymLinks? Lots

ToDo List

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.

Skincare

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