@bytesnz

Jack Farley, Computer Engineer

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  • 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.

    The next place I decided to target for my litter picker antics was the paths along Hoe Stream and the White Rose Lane Local Nature Reserve (OSM). Having fixed the issues with the GPS positions on the Pi and the other issues I found, I was hopeful of great success with the litter picker.

    As I was walking to the park I found that the GPS module was taking a very very long time to get a good fix. I pulled out my phone and fired up the track recording in OSMAnd so I could at least track where I went, which magically made the GPS module on the Pi get a good fix.

    Missing the bridge as I was paying too much attention to my phone and the muddy puddles, I started from Hoe Bridge School Sports Grounds and worked back to the nature reserve.

    On previous walks, I had seen a couple of bits of trash caught by a tree that had fallen in to the Hoe Stream, so once I had gone round the nature reserve once, headed to the tree. It was a lot worse than I thought. I picked out a dozen bottles, four tennis balls, a nerf dart and a strange black floating ball, which shattered when I tried to crush it (still not sure what it is) and found I was out of space in my bag - will go back with a drysuit to get the rest.

    The trash caught on the tree

    On returning home, I found again that it hadn't recorded positions. It turned out it was due to some wires shorting the serial lines on the GPS modules that I hadn't cleaned up after soldering them (bad Jack). Since I had recorded my track on my phone, I was able to add GPS positions to the images by correlating the time the photo was taken with the position data from track using Digikam (select the images, open the "Item" menu, select "Edit Geolocation", change to the "GPS Correlator" tab, load the GPX file, choose the correct timezone, click "Correlate" and voilĂ ).

    The trash picked

    The tally for the picking was:

    • 3 face masks
    • 1 medical glove
    • 4 tennis balls
    • 3 bags of dog poop
    • 2 empty dog poop bags
    • 3 wet wipes
    • 19 single use plastic bottles
    • 1 plastic drink bottle
    • 3 glass bottles
    • 15 cans
    • 1 pair of garden gloves
    • 2 takeaway containers
    • 1 juice pouch
    • 1 yoghurt container
    • 11 snack wrappers
    • a couple of other bits of plastic bag

    As before here is a video of the images from the pi-trash-cam.

    A video of all the images of litter I picked up during the day

    Here is the commands I used to create the video

    $ # Resize the images
    $ for f in `ls *.jpg`; do convert -auto-orient -resize '640x480^' -quality 80 "$f" "resized/$f"; done
    $ # Create a video from the images
    $ convert -delay 10 resized/* trash.mpg
    $ # Encode as 
    $ ffmpeg  -i trash.mpg -vcodec libx264 trash.mp4
    Close
  • 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.

  • 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
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