@bytesnz

Jack Farley, Computer Engineer

  • home
  • about
  • 12/25/2020, 12:13:48 AM

    A new Litter Survey

    softwarelitterlitter-survey

    In a culmination of litter surveys and litter picks, linked data() and data exploration, and remoteStorage and ActivityPub, I have created a web-based litter pick/survey app that I hope will allow federated citizen science.

  • 12/13/2020, 6:00:00 PM

    Hoe Stream Trash

    litterpi-trash-camlitter-pick

    My latest litter pick target was Hoe Stream and the White Rose Lane Local Nature Reserve. Here's how it went.

  • 11/24/2020, 6:00:00 PM

    Release the Beast

    softwaregitlabcirelease

    I just created a Gitlab CI job to create a release with information from a CHANGELOG.md file for some of my projects. Here's how I did it.

  • 9/30/2020, 9:00:00 PM

    Gitlab CI Caching

    gitlabcontinuous integration

    I noticed something strange happening during build process during a multi-tasking bug fix. Turns out I was using Gitlab CI's caching incorrectly. I should have been using artifacts. Here's what I saw.

  • 9/21/2020, 6:00:00 PM

    Birthday Trash

    litterpi-trash-cam

    As a birthday treat, I took the day off work to try out my electronerised litter picker. Here's how it went.

    The First Venture

    After a nice slow start to the day, my first plan of the day was to try my creation, the super-powered litter picker (with attached camera and GPS), in the local neighbourhood.

    I grabbed the battery, some spare electrical tape and a pair of scissors and headed to the Jackmobile (my bicycle).

    It didn't take long to spot my first target - in fact I didn't even make it onto the road.

    The first litter I found, 20m from my front door KFC takeaways

    I decided the trash was going to be there when I got back, so left it where it was and headed to the place I planned to activate the litter picker.

    As expected, there was trash to be had, so I pulled over and connected the battery, taped it in place waited for the GPS to start its 1 pulse-per-second flash.

    The first catch was a beer can, a water bottle and a napkin.

    Turns out litter-picking from a bicycle is not quite as easy as I hoped, especially with brakes that were needing some TLC. Going at slow pace, I was able to spot litter and then turn around and pick it up.

    After riding down to Westfield Common and picking a few bits round the Pink Pig, I decided to head to the Basingstoke Canal towpath via the flat to drop off what I had already picked up.

    I found litter scattered along the towpath and a couple of trees with lots of cans underneath them.

    The bad connection on the battery started playing up and the Pi started turning off and on again, and not in the fix it way.

    I headed back to base to review the haul and the footage.

    The First Litter Haul

    The haul totalled of around 2 shopping bags worth of litter, 60% of which was plastic bottles and can - a perfect example of why a deposit return schema is sorely needed in the UK. It also contained a pair of medical gloves, plucked from a tree, and two face masks.

    The non-recyclable litter haul The recyclable litter haul

    The Footage

    Unfortunately, the haul wasn't as good on the Pi.

    Just before leaving, I added some code to record the track I took, which unfortunately upset the recording of the positions on the images.

    The trigger on the upper part of the handle along with the bad battery connection also caused Pi not to capture images of most of the litter picked along the towpath.

    I fixed the code, taped off the twitchy part of the trigger and sorted a way to position the battery so that it did not keep resetting the Pi.

    To The Beach

    Ready for round two, I caught the train down to Littlehampton for the MCS Great British Beach Clean event.

    During the beach clean, the Pi and trigger worked much better. Unfortunately, the litter picker was not the best at picking the small bits of plastic and cigarette butts.

    The Results

    Unfortunately, I don't have a full tally of litter I picked up on my birthday, but have made the following clip from the images captured by the Pi during the picking. Definitely room for improvement, but the concept proved a success.

    A video of all the images of litter I picked up during the day
    Close
  • 9/13/2020, 12:12:13 AM

    Pi Trash Cam

    raspberry pielectronicslitterpi-trash-cam

    In preparation for a day of litter picking, I finally got round to a project idea - attaching a camera to a litter picker to record it all. Here's what I did.

  • 8/25/2020, 9:29:58 PM

    yarn add --dev webdriverio

    first-draftsoftwaretestinggitlab

    I finally started implementing UI testing on first-draft using WebdriverIO. While writing tests was easy, getting the tests running was a little more difficult. Here is how I did it.

  • 8/16/2020, 7:04:44 PM

    Hooray! My new blog is live! Based on Sapper, using MongoDB and eventually ActivityPub and ActivityStreams, it will be my federated posting hub to the world.

    softwareblog
  • 8/9/2020, 5:40:49 PM

    Removing EXIF Data from Photos

    exifphotos

    Creating this new blog, I wanted to make sure there was no metadata data leaking personal information. Here's how I removed all the metadata tags except the ones I wanted from my photos.

  • 8/9/2020, 10:21:41 AM

    tmux List and Reattach

    tmuxbashsoftware

    Using tmux for your terminal multiplexer but want an easy to reattach to a session? Here's a small bash script to do it.

  • 8/8/2020, 2:58:48 PM

    Selectable Shell Examples

    markdownsyntaxcss

    Here's how to help your readers save time by making your post's shell commands easy to select and copy - with a simple CSS property.

  • 8/5/2020, 6:48:38 PM

    Be Dates You

    mongodbdocker

    Making my new blog, I didn't initially set the published dates to be native dates in the database. Here what I did to change them ...and do all the upgrades I needed.

  • 7/8/2020, 4:00:00 PM

    Testing vue components

    softwarevuetestingjavascript

    I recently needed to test that some Vue components were creating the correct HTML. To do this, I decided to create snapshots of Object representations of the rendered HTML.

  • 2/20/2019, 12:00:00 AM

    No More Numbers

    javascripthtml5software

    HTML5 number inputs aren't useful, but tel inputs, have all the power

  • 12/21/2018, 12:00:00 AM

    A Hacker "Hacked" Me

    securityemailgrep

    I decided to look into the extortion emails I have been getting and wrote a small script to extract the bitcoin addresses that have been used.

  • 12/7/2018, 12:00:00 AM

    Mouse Surgery

    pledge to not upgradeelectronics

    As part of my pledge not to upgrade, I decided to repair two of my failing mice instead of replacing them with a brand new model (as tempting as it was). Here's what I did.

  • 10/29/2018, 7:00:00 PM

    Danger Danger, Highly Reactive

    vuereactivegraphingdata
  • 9/11/2018, 7:00:00 AM

    Switching to SSR

    reactssrreact-loader
  • 8/10/2018, 4:00:00 PM

    Clean Docker Registry

    nodedockerconsolejavascript
  • 2/1/2018, 12:00:00 AM

    Testing on the Filesystem

    testingjavascript
  • 1/26/2018, 12:00:00 AM

    Tag You Are

    javascripttags
  • 1/25/2018, 9:00:00 PM

    NaN Got Me

    rubber duck savejavascriptnodejsjson
  • 4/28/2017, 10:25:34 AM

    All our app's tabs are belong to us

    angularjavascriptlocalstoragerxjssessionstorage
  • 2/20/2016, 2:33:19 AM

    Developing NPM modules

    nodejsnpm
  • 2/20/2016, 1:48:13 AM

    Nfa + Nfb or N(f+fa+fb)

    arrayfunctionjavascriptjsperf
  • 10/31/2015, 3:36:29 PM

    Photo Layout

    arrangercssgallery hierarchyhtmljavascriptphotostinymcewordpresssoftware
  • 10/31/2015, 2:33:49 PM

    Browning Pass HideAway Web Site

    cssgallery hierarchyhtmlwordpress
  • 10/17/2015, 4:04:57 PM

    Think Mobile

    mobileweb
  • 10/13/2015, 9:30:59 AM

    Pledge to Refuse and Not Buy Bottled Water

    environmentpledges
  • 2/25/2015, 7:42:33 AM

    Run PHP run!

    maximum execution timephptrial and error
  • 11/26/2014, 6:35:32 AM

    Gallery Hierarchy

    galleryhierarchyphotos
  • 10/3/2014, 7:22:04 AM

    Vim and functions

    functionnavigationtagsvim
  • 9/26/2014, 3:18:53 AM

    I'm making hierarchies

    hierarchical datahierarchyphp
  • 9/4/2014, 1:45:18 PM

    Google Sheets fun

    googlegoogle scriptgoogle sheetsjavascriptsheets
  • 8/13/2014, 3:14:22 AM

    Travel Photos

    photo managementphotostravel photos
  • 8/13/2014, 3:02:22 AM

    Image managment scripts

    photo managementphotos
  • 7/31/2014, 3:43:45 PM

    MeldCE logo

    csshtml5javascriptsvg
  • 4/26/2014, 6:34:09 AM

    MoltenDB

    databasemoltendbmongodbnodejs
  • 10/29/2013, 12:09:07 AM

    The Expensive Side

    house
  • 9/22/2013, 7:00:08 PM

    abcde

    music
  • 7/16/2013, 8:26:10 PM

    Energizer Power Plus Rechargeable Batteries

    gadgets
  • 3/4/2013, 6:27:40 PM

    USAR FOGTeX

    fogtex
  • 2/21/2013, 9:09:54 PM

    Personal Gear Bag

    rescuegear
  • 2/18/2013, 11:10:34 PM

    Geocaching Stamp

    stampgeocaching
  • 4/2/2007, 3:50:02 PM

    Call Record Presenter

    parserpythonsqliteweb
  • 9/25/2004, 9:48:10 AM

    Kimi Ora School

    csshtml
  • 6/25/2004, 8:53:53 AM

    All About Catering Web Site

    csshtml
  • 7/26/2003, 7:52:11 AM

    Quantum Accounting Web Site

    csshtml
Copyright BytesNZ 2021. Powered by Sapper
[matrix]